So it comes as no surprise that President Bashir wanted to visit a neighboring country to again thumb his nose at the international community. (But don’t expect him to stay long; I imagine that he doesn’t want his fellow party members to figure out that they can get along perfectly well without him.) Perhaps the biggest loser from this short visit: Eritrea. Eritrea had a chance to hit reset in its relations with the United States with the advent of the Obama administration. Eritrea’s least desirable tourist will now make that much harder, and that is a huge lost opportunity for all involved. The Bush administration had pushed hard to have Eritrea included on the State Sponsor of Terror list at the end of 2008, in a move that we at Enough argued was ill-advised, and would have only made resolving the situation in Somalia even more difficult. Some of Eritrea’s leaders may have been well compensated to make Bashir’s visit happen, but it really is difficult to see how this serves the Eritrean national interest over the long-term.
